How hated will we be?

[SecondH]

DH and I are looking at buying a second home by the coast. I would love to hear from other second home owners and people who live in areas where there are lots of second home owners. How hated by the locals would we be? Do neighbours ignore you etc?

The trouble with leaving a house empty for long periods is that you have to worry about things like break ins, vandalism, squatters, pipes breaking, pest infestations, the place getting damp and stale etc.
If you aren't monitoring the place and something goes wrong, that's going to annoy the neighbours on top of it being wasted for most of the year whilst it sits empty.

There's a flip side to coin on the argument about leaving homes for locals, in the north east a lot of arguments rumble on about places like Staithes and Robin Hoods Bay not having enough homes for younger locals but places like that are never going to see a drop in price enough for younger people to afford it.

There's a lot of impracticalities to living in some of these places such as not necessarily having schools, doctors surgeries, supermarkets nearby and probably having a miserable commute to urban areas where work
It's also not good to be raising kids somewhere where there is no other kids to play with. Also a lot of the demographic in these places is pensioners, we moved on to a cul de sac with a lot of pensioners on a few years back and our neighbour in his early 80's asked me if we had kids and he was glad when I said no, a family with 3 young boys had lived here previously and probably wasn't appreciated by the elderly around here.

For a doctor you don't have much common sense! Not every Cornish person has a Cornish accent. Not every Kent person has a Kent accent.

Yes and you can see it needs maintenance inside and out. I'm sure you know what happens to houses that sit unheated for years on end.

Agreed, it is liveable, it just needs a lot of work. The kitchen would need ripping out and new flooring throughout. I'd have bifolds put in too.

In the area of Cornwall that I live, there are lots of displaced Kentish people. They've been here since the 80s.
The demographic has gone very wrong. The local schools have very few pupils, compared to 30 years ago, and the Secondary school can no longer sustain a 6th form that it previously had to build a separate annex for.

They pay more council tax.

Even 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.. It's not a new thing at all for there to be a mixture of people.

Thinking back to my school days in the 1980s, most people had mixed Cornish heritage or families from upcountry. No problem, completely normal.

The Cornish are broadly welcoming as long as you don't take the piss.

Realistically- the churches are emptying out anyway, they are not full anywhere in the country! The school rolls were falling in many rural places before Airbnb, our local school closed. These are places with low wages, few jobs and rural poverty; they weren't thriving before second-home people came along in the way people are making out. So many people wanted to move away, the homes were sold on to the highest bidder! I love Devon and Cornwall but I'm not blind to what was happening in these communities twenty years ago.

People are blaming things that were already happening in society on incomers- starting to sound familiar.

Calm the fuck down

The price is just silly, big big losses coming on these properties if rates go up.

I thought it was plain enough English. People
move into scenic areas of the country, often from wealthier areas eg London and other large cities, and can afford to pay over the odds to secure a nice home , pricing out local families and people trying to get on the property ladder. In time prices escalate until they bear no relation to levels of local income, creating a property owning aristocracy and an excluded majority of local people doing ordinary jobs.

The general opinions are yes you would be hated. This is absolutely dreadful. The day I would let strangers who have no more right to stay in Cornwall than I do regardless of generations of inhabitants there would be a blue moon in the sky. How sad this whole thread is regarding attitudes towards new residents when you have said you would live there full time when you retire. If Cornwall lost the holiday makers it would be a huge loss to the economy in the area. I say be careful what you wish for.

Yes it does seem to bring out a judgmental feeling in people doesn’t it about who is worthy to live there the same as some people in cities don’t want too many asylum seekers. I would hope that if you were a kind pleasant person who made an effort to integrate and offer something to the community that you would be accepted. I can understand why people would be against people who were entitled , rude and one of life’s takers though.
For instance is the retired teacher who has spent years helping disadvantaged children any less right to retire in Cornwall than someone who’s parents moved down years ago but now the children are grown and have made no effort to find a job . We are all judging each other in some way it seems and we often don’t know the whole story .

Part of the problem is people come to Cornwall to retire though. We are not a retirement complex, but we seem to be developing a median age well in excess of anywhere else in the county.

An ageing and non-employed population in a county with only one A&E, a GP crisis, a dentist crisis, a housing crisis and plenty of other problems isn't helping at all.

Colleges have closed almost all their smaller departments so you can only get further education by travelling - but they've cut our bus services so hard that swathes of the county are cut off.

We are still regularly cut off when the train lines are closed each winter because of weather / damage to the railways. There is no motorway in Cornwall and West Cornwall is only accessible via a single lane A road (unless you know the B roads and back lanes). The traffic chaos remains astonishing in summer even with the work to the A30.

Tourism isn't the main business here, it's actually agriculture but because the bloody turkeys voted for Christmas, the post-Brexit situation for farming is dire. See Clarksons Farm for more information.

Wages are very low, many many jobs are seasonal (see both farming and tourism) so lots of people end up unemployed between October and March each year, yet housing costs are disproportionately high compared with incomes.

The council will probably be the next one to go bankrupt - they are currently selling off council owned land to try to make up some of their gaps yet we pay above average council tax.

We have long since paid higher water costs than anywhere else in the UK because South West Water charge us for cleaning up their messes involving beaches and waterways. We used to get £50/year from the government towards this excess cost but this government scrapped that in 2025.

The county doesn't need more retirees, it needs injections of money and investment into industry to encourage employment and wage increases, mass house building programmes (although good luck getting that past the NIMBYs), infrastructure improvements and basically anything at all to drive the local economy.

This is someone who might move down in around 6 years time if her husband retires in his mid 50s. In the meantime she plans to do a big renovation project and then leave the property largely empty for several years.

Of course that's annoying. Personally I wouldn't hate them, but their actions would be very annoying. There will always be another property which come along in a few years time, but they wouldn't be offering anything except another empty home. My own village isn't pretty and I think every house is lived in year in, year out by teachers, lawyers, hairdressers, builders and retired folk like my parents. They use the local shop every day, almost have reserved seats in the doctor's surgery and use the garden centre & farm stores.

I am a local. If you look at the OP’s link, you will see that the property she is interested in has been on the market for two years. What the OP is proposing is to buy it and renovate it - and use it (probably because she loves the area) until retirement - and, if she so chooses, to live here permanently. In the meantime, she will pay extra Council Tax and hopefully frequent some of our lovely restaurants and shops.

It is sad and empty at the moment - and no average young person on average wages here could afford a property costing over £1 million and needing work.

We always wanted a sea view but could never afford it. We were not angry or envious and continued to work and save hard. We have moved a few times and now have a sea glimpse 😊 (age 60 and 70). Maybe we will eventually get our sea view but most likely not.

We keep dreaming and do not resent anyone who has what we do not - as long as they have come by their money by legitimate means and not scammed anyone - like we were scammed. I feel sure the OP is not in that category!

Someone local in this thread knew the house and said its a rental home for service industry workers.

The said that is what it looked like. Those photos are 2 years old.

On the market for two years = Overpriced. Secretly the locals laugh at the people who overpay for these properties, it is just the media that whips up the "destroying communities!" "Not enough houses!" hysteria because they are complicit in brainwashing people to overpay (borrow) for shelter.

The new Renters Rights Act may change how willing people are to let people casually rent because they can't evict them as easily- there was an example on this thread of someone coming to an arrangement with local teachers with it being vacant for them in the summer, that's something you would be unwise to do if you didn't want to end up with sitting tenants (although the act does allow you to give notice to people to sell, just over a longer period).

What are the rules on AirBnB"s if someone refuses to leave?

Do you go by the philosophy that if you say it enough times on enough threads over enough years about enough houses in enough places, it might just come true @Crashy?

I think if it's for a short-term holiday let, it's not covered, but many AirBnb people let their homes out for longer, say in winter, and they will be covered by the new assured tenancy agreements. I don't know much more though.

Some really jealous, bitter responses on this thread

OH that's new. Airbnb would only allow 28 day stays last year. I guess then you'd have to come to an agreement privately with the owner.

I've known people between houses who've managed to get winter letting if say a new build isn't completed, or they've builders in.